A group of people who where attending the Houston ISD Board of Education media conference pray together after learning of the death of the Houston District K city council member Larry Green Tuesday, March 6, 2018. less

A group of people who where attending the Houston ISD Board of Education media conference pray together after learning of the death of the Houston District K city council member Larry Green Tuesday, March 6, ... more

Photo: Melissa Phillip, Houston Chronicle

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Notable Deaths of 2018

Notable Deaths of 2018

Photo: Antonella Ragazzoni / Eyeem/Getty Images/EyeEm

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tephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking, 1942-2018:Stephen Hawking, whose brilliant mind ranged across time and space though his body was paralyzed by disease, died Wednesday, March 14, 2018, at his home in Cambridge, England. He was 76. The best-known theoretical physicist of his time, Hawking wrote so lucidly of the mysteries of space, time and black holes that his book, "A Brief History of Time," became an international best-seller, making him one of science's biggest celebrities since Albert Einstein.

Stephen Hawking, 1942-2018:Stephen Hawking, whose brilliant mind ranged across time and space though his body was paralyzed by disease, died Wednesday, March 14, 2018, at his home in Cambridge, England. He

Roger Bannister, 1929-2018: Roger Bannister, who as a lanky medical student at Oxford in 1954
electrified the sports world and lifted postwar England's spirits when
he became the first athlete to run a mile in under 4 minutes, died
Saturday, March 3, 2018, in Oxford at 88.

David Ogden Stiers, 1942-2018: Actor David Ogden Stiers, best known for his role as the snooty Maj.
Charles Emerson Winchester III on the popular TV show "MASH," died
Saturday, March 3, 2018 at his home in Newport, Ore., after a battle with cancer. He was 75.

Nanette Fabray, the vivacious actress, singer and dancer who became a
star in Broadway musicals, on television as Sid Caesar's comic foil and
in such hit movies as "The Band Wagon," died Thursday, Feb. 22, 2018, at her home in Palos Verdes Estates, Calif., at age 97.

The Rev. Billy Graham, who transformed American religious life through
his preaching and activism, becoming a counselor to presidents and the
most widely heard Christian evangelist in history, died at his home in North Carolina Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2018.
He was 99.

Vic Damone, 1928-2018: Vic Damone, whose mellow baritone once earned praise from Frank Sinatra as "the best pipes in the business," died Sunday, Feb. 11, 2018, in Florida at the age of 89. Damone's easy-listening romantic ballads brought him million-selling records and sustained a half-century career in recordings, movies and nightclub, concert and television appearances.

John Mahoney, 1940-2018:John
Mahoney, who as the cranky, blue-collar dad in "Frasier" played
counterpoint to pompous sons Frasier and Niles, died Sunday, Feb. 4,
2018. Mahoney was 77.

John Mahoney, 1940-2018:John Mahoney, who as the cranky, blue-collar dad in "Frasier" played counterpoint to pompous sons Frasier and Niles, died Sunday, Feb. 4, 2018. Mahoney was 77.

Photo: Reed Saxon

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Dennis Edwards

Dennis Edwards, 1943-2018: Dennis Edwards, a Grammy-winning former member of the famed Motown group the Temptations, died Thursday, Feb. 1, 2018, in Chicago after a long illness. He was 74.

Dennis Edwards, 1943-2018: Dennis Edwards, a Grammy-winning former member of the famed Motown group the Temptations, died Thursday, Feb. 1, 2018, in Chicago after a long illness. He was 74.

Photo: David Redfern, Redferns Via Getty Images

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Mort Walker

Mort Walker, 1923-2018:

Comic strip artist
Mort Walker, a World War II veteran who satirized the Army and tickled
millions of newspaper readers with the antics of the lazy private
"Beetle Bailey," died Saturday, Jan. 27, 2018, at his home in Stamford, Conn. He was 94.

Ursula K. Le Guin, the award-winning science fiction and fantasy
writer who explored feminist themes and was best known for her Earthsea
books, died Monday, Jan. 22, 2018, at her home in Portland, Oregon, at 88.

Mark E Smith from post-punk band, The Fall, the fall died at the age of 60 in January. Smith formed The Fall when punk hit 1970s Manchester, and the gray industrial English city sprouted innovative bands including Joy Division and The Buzzcocks. Irascible and inimitable, Smith kept The Fall going for four decades and more than 30 albums. He was the band's only permanent member, hiring, firing and falling out with several dozen musicians along the way.

This 1965 photo made available by NASA shows John Young during the Gemini 3 mission. NASA says the astronaut, who walked on the moon and later commanded the first space shuttle flight, died on Friday, Jan. 5, 2018. He was 87. (NASA via AP)

Jerry Van Dyke, the younger brother of Dick Van Dyke who struggled for
decades to achieve his own stardom before clicking as the dim-witted
sidekick in television's "Coach," died Friday, Jan. 5, 2018 in Arkansas. He was 86.

Houston City Councilman Larry Green was found dead at his home late Tuesday morning, prompting an outpouring of sadness from City Hall to the southwest Houston district he represented for more than six years.

The cause of death was not immediately known, though Houston police said foul play was not suspected.

Green’s ubiquity at civic club meetings and dogged work ethic took a district created from the “stepchildren” neighborhoods of two former districts and made it “better than the sum of our parts,” as Westbury civic leader Becky Edmondson put it. Texting Green at midnight often would produce an answer, she said. Meyerland/Westbury civic leader Art Pronin agreed — but put the time at 1 a.m.

“He’s at my civic club meeting, he’s at the coalition meeting, he’s at the Super Neighborhood meeting,” Keswick Place civic leader Linda Scurlock said. “He’s there. He’s not on a pedestal. I’ve lived in this community for 41 years, and we’ve never had a council member like that. It was like your friend. I’d call him all the time.”

Even residents pleased with their representatives do not always view those politicians as “friends,” but Edmondson used the same word. When she informed her daughter of Green’s passing, her daughter wept. And when her 9-year-old grandson heard the news, he cried, too.

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“He’s been planting trees with Larry since he was 2 years old. He considers Larry as his friend,” Edmondson said. “He was a leader for the city, he was our advocate in District K - and he was my friend. And he was a friend to hundreds of other people like me that met him during his tenure. I’ll really miss him.”

Green's staff members asked the Houston Police Department to check on him at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, Assistant Chief Wendy Bainbridge said, after the usually meticulous councilman had missed appointments and failed to return calls.

Officers forced their way into his condominium where they found Green dead in his bed.

Green practiced law for two decades, served as district director for U.S. Rep Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, and ran the job training nonprofit HoustonWorks USA for four years, leaving that post a few months after winning his council seat. As a councilman, he chaired the transportation, technology and infrastructure committee and also held leadership posts with the National League of Cities.

Former city controller and councilman Ronald Green spoke as a friend and on behalf of the councilman's family, thanking the public for its concern but asking for privacy. Ronald Green, no relation to the late councilman, recalled interning for him as a young lawyer and also serving with him at City Hall.

"I think people down the road will look back and see the results of all that he did for his district," Green said. "He's from this area — a native Houstonian, a Madison High School graduate, a University of Houston graduate, a Thurgood Marshall School of Law graduate — so he's a hometown boy. He has so many roots in this city. He'll be missed all across the city."

Scurlock said his constituents — whom she said received precious little attention from previous

council members — will miss him most. She ticked off the projects Green secured during his tenure: Key street repairs, a new southwest police station, a new economic development zone, new lighting along South Main, extensions of major streets to open vacant land for development.

Green took builders on tours around his district, pitching its numerous vacant tracts for development. He organized Neighborhood 101 meetings, educating residents on such topics as drafting a will, running a civic club or using city regulations to beautify or protect their neighborhoods. He organized an aggressive tree-planting program and was a champion for a program that hires artists to beautify electrical boxes at intersections.

His office routinely was the most efficient of the 11 district council members’ in allocating his district-specific funds: Gathering project requests from civic clubs, vetting them and prioritizing them for funding.

This efficiency didn’t preclude a “jovial” approach at luncheons or events for seniors at Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, Scurlock said. At Green’s Valentine’s Day gathering last month, Scurlock said, the councilman sang and handed out roses.

“My phone has been ringing off the hook because people just can’t believe it. We’re all numb,” Scurlock said. “He was vibrant, he was alive.”

Green's colleagues on the council, which met in a regularly scheduled session Tuesday afternoon, called the news devastating. City Secretary Anna Russell, the keeper of protocol and procedure at the horseshoe, produced a somber moment as she called the roll, "In memory and last roll call, former Councilman Green," and was met with silence.

"I am shocked and at a bit of a loss," Mayor Sylvester Turner told his colleagues. "But one person's feelings are secondary to the fact that all of Houston has lost a groundbreaking advocate for equality, economic opportunity and neighborhood safety.”

Turner also referenced Green’s role as the first representative of a new district, saying, “He was the right person to give definition to this new alliance of neighborhoods and businesses: A hard worker. Not a grandstander. He shared in the economic advances and public safety strides of the district without taking the credit for himself."

"He's a beloved council member," said at-large Councilman David Robinson. "A fearless advocate, a tireless champion of those in the city who historically had less, and just a great guy — fair minded, passionate, diligent."

District I Councilman Robert Gallegos remembered Green as a "great man, passionate advocate and public servant."

"When I was first elected in 2014, Larry was one of the first council members to congratulate and welcome me. He had a genuine passion for serving his community and our city," Gallegos tweeted Tuesday afternoon. "I will deeply miss him."

City Controller Chris Brown called Green "a true friend to everyone who knew him and a tireless champion for our city. His passion for Houston was contagious, and his passing leaves an unfillable void at City Hall and across our city."

Turner’s communications director, Alan Bernstein, said late Tuesday the city legal department still was reviewing the procedures for naming Green’s replacement. The city charter authorizes council to fill vacancies by majority vote, but does not specify a timeline for doing so.

Green is survived by a brother, two nieces and a nephew, all of Houston, and numerous family members in Texas and Louisiana. Funeral arrangements are pending.